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On VLC version 0.9.8a (Grishenko): I have a question about closed-captions (CC are not subtitles). There are two major standards (608 vs 708) with several subdivisions in those standards. Can anyone confirm if they can play out the 7 standards shown on this page (the second section has 5 second mpg clips):

http://www.pixeltools.com/tech_tip_clos ... oning.html

VLC only displays 708ntsc_field1 for me. All others do not show CC info, either displayed or in the Tools->Codec Info menu.

FWIW: The above distilled examples are a good summary of the trouble I have seen with many files.

To clarify: "VLC only displays " should read instead

For me, VLC displays only the 708ntsc_field1 closed-captions. For all of the other files, the closed captions are missing.

(The video itself plays fine in all cases. JUst the closed captions are missing.)

Please use VLC 1.0.0 and report, since it has better support for those.

Thanks j-b. After a couple of days for building a fresh machine: Fresh compile of 1.0.0-pre2 under brand-new (fully updated) fedora-10, fresh compile of ffmpeg, libmad, liba52.

Same result. (The only video I see CC option for is 708ntsc_field1.mpg under right click -> video -> subtitles track.)

Q's:
Is 1.0.0-pre2 very different in its support of CC than 1.0.0?
Is there a prior set of tests that were used for testing CCs? I'd be happy to try that on this system.
I note that fedora is nowhere on the vlc devel build page. Is there some fedora-specific issue that I've tripped across?

Anyway, we'd like to support hearing-impaired folks for our app. So even if this costs me a bit of time, I'd like to help make it work. Alternatively, if you know of a good CC playout and would like to strike this from the already-long list of things to do, please let me know.

Do you have zvbi enabled? do you have libmpeg2 enabled?

zvbi: no
libmpeg2: yes (because it looks like the default is that way.)

I'll recompile with both explicitly enabled and post the result.

Yes, please.
And post samples.

Well, I have tried a few things.

First, I enable zvbi and libmpeg explicitly. Again the only mpeg that has a cc stream in the codec information (and on the screen) is 708ntsc_field1. (See the first post for the link to the mpeg samples for 608 vs 708, CEA/ATSC/DVD).

The machine was old, 2000 vintage, running fedora 10. I brought up a i7 920 with a fresh install of fedora and newly compiled liba52, libmad, ffmpeg, x264, and vlc. I get errors along the lines of what is listed at the end of this message. I see several folks pointing out that errors like these are indicative of vlc not finding the plugins, yet I can't find any combination of --plugin-path that makes it work. I suspect that I'm running against some 64 bit issues. (for example, I can't compile --enable-shared without complaints about -fPIC.)

I can't say I know where to look in order to add some value here. For the US, 608 has the largest body of closed-captions for broadcast, so that one is important to me. Any pointers or clues that can be thrown in my general direction would be welcome.

JP

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[errors from i7 920 machine running fresh fedora 10 fully updated.]

$ vlc -vvv
VLC media player 1.1.0-git Goldeneye
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: VLC media player - version 1.1.0-git Goldeneye - (c) 1996-2009 the VideoLAN team
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: libvlc was configured with ./configure '--enable-x11' '--enable-xvideo' '--disable-gtk' '--enable-sdl' '--enable-avcodec' '--enable-avformat' '--enable-swscale' '--enable-mad' '--enable-zvbi' '--enable-libdvbpsi' '--enable-a52' '--enable-libmpeg2' '--enable-dvdnav' '--enable-mkv' '--enable-freetype' '--enable-fribidi' '--enable-speex' '--enable-flac' '--enable-caca' '--enable-skins' '--enable-skins2' '--enable-alsa' '--disable-kde' '--enable-qt4' '--enable-ncurses' '--enable-release' '--enable-static' '-disable-shared' 'PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig'
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: translation test: code is "C"
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: checking plugin modules
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: loading plugins cache file /home/jpm/.cache/vlc/plugins-04081e.dat
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: recursively browsing `/usr/local/lib/vlc'
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: module bank initialized (1 modules)
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: opening config file (/home/jpm/.config/vlc/vlcrc)
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: CPU has capabilities 486 586 MMX MMXEXT SSE SSE2 FPU
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: looking for memcpy module: 0 candidates
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: no memcpy module matched "any"
[0x1b6ecd8] main playlist debug: Activated
[0x1b6ecd8] main playlist debug: rebuilding array of current - root Playlist
[0x1b6ecd8] main playlist debug: rebuild done - 0 items, index -1
[0x7f0b400009b8] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x7f0b400009b8] main interface error: no interface module matched "hotkeys,none"
[0x7f0b400009b8] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.018 ms - Total 0.018 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.018 ms)
[0x7f0b400009b8] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "hotkeys,none" initialization failed
[0x1b725f8] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b725f8] main interface error: no interface module matched "inhibit,none"
[0x1b725f8] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.014 ms - Total 0.014 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.014 ms)
[0x1b725f8] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "inhibit,none" initialization failed
[0x1b725f8] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b725f8] main interface error: no interface module matched "screensaver,none"
[0x1b725f8] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.011 ms - Total 0.011 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.011 ms)
[0x1b725f8] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "screensaver,none" initialization failed
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: option drawable-xid does not exist
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no interface module matched "signals"
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.012 ms - Total 0.012 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.012 ms)
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "signals" initialization failed
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no interface module matched "globalhotkeys,none"
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.010 ms - Total 0.010 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.010 ms)
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "globalhotkeys,none" initialization failed
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: looking for interface module: 0 candidates
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no interface module matched "any"
[0x1b73c88] main interface debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.009 ms - Total 0.009 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.009 ms)
[0x1b73c88] main interface error: no suitable interface module
[0x1b5b098] main libvlc error: interface "(null)" initialization failed
*** LibVLC Exception not handled: Interface initialization failed

[0x1b5b098] main libvlc debug: module bank initialized (1 modules)

Yes, you are missing all plugins. From build_dir, run ./vlc -vvv --list

After recompiling of libs & vlc with -fPIC, I got the fast 64-bit machine running. From the mpeg samples here:
http://www.pixeltools.com/tech_tip_clos ... oning.html

Viewing under tools->codec information:
atsc: no cc
608-field1: no cc
708-dtv: no cc
708-field1: cc stream present
708-both: 1 cc stream present (probably field 1?)
dvd: cc stream present
scte: cc stream present

Here is another bizarre item: On my machine, the actual video display was correct only for dvd. All others had wacky displays, and errors to the terminal like those attached below.

Is there a set of videos that was used for testing this code already? (ie, a gold-standard?) The set from pixeltools is something I found, and I don't have a good readout as to the quality/standards that they set. I've used some Rhozet-encoded items too (they are all 608), but again, those are not any sort of gold standard.


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some errors from scte, for example (just a few lines included, there were many more lines like this...)

ac-tex damaged at 38 14
slice mismatch
invalid cbp at 24 17
[0x2bb6ea8] ps demux warning: garbage at input, trying to resync...
invalid cbp at 7 18
mb incr damaged
slice mismatch
ac-tex damaged at 19 21
[0x2bb6ea8] ps demux warning: found sync code
ac-tex damaged at 5 22
invalid mb type in B Frame at 26 23
mb incr damaged
invalid mb type in B Frame at 29 25
slice mismatch
ac-tex damaged at 4 27
ac-tex damaged at 4 28
end mismatch left=6790 1445A0
[0x2bb6ea8] ps demux warning: garbage at input, trying to resync...
[0x2bb6ea8] ps demux warning: found sync code